How do you pronounce the Dutch 'r'?

Hello people of Duolingo! I have a slight query involving the Dutch 'r'. My Dutch teacher has instructed me to use the trilled 'r' found in Spanish or Russian, and all of the sound files on Wiktionary have a trilled 'r', but I have heared many people pronounce it like the guttural French 'r' (and I find it really hard to pronounce, and it doesn't sound natural to me.).

My question is this; can I keep JUST using the trilled variant? or must I use the guttural version?

Thanks in advance...?

JoeLai1

2 years ago

7 Comments

It's pronounced in many different ways throughout the Dutch language area and your Dutch teacher should know that. If you have trouble with the trilled r or any other specific variant, don't worry about it too much - people will absolutely understand you if you use a different r, and there's a lot of variation in [r] pronunciation in Dutch even among native speakers.

I'm a native speaker of Dutch (raised in the Randstad), and this is how I speak (reading the first lines of this). The sound quality sucks, but what I'm trying to tell you with this is that you don't need the trilled [r] or the 'guttural' [r] or anything. The way I pronounce [r] is fairly standard and I'd say it's neither of those.

Sheldonia, Please correct me if I'm wrong but sometimes I hear the same speaker pronounce the r:

Like the English r in "ray": paard

Like the French r in "rouge": rustig (?)

Like the Brazilian from Rio de Janeiro r in "rua": groot

Like the Spanish r in "arco": waterkant

And maybe even the "silent" British r in "car"?

Maybe I'm making up some of those but I swear I hear many different r's.

I see some rules like I usually hear the English r in words where the r is the second to last letter in the word and the last letter is a consonant... but again maybe I'm making those up. Is there any pattern?